To capture the essence of SAT geometry,
look at the following figure, which resembles a child’s drawing
of a house:

Here’s how most SAT geometry works:

If you get information about a triangle,
you’ll be asked something about a rectangle.

If you get information about a rectangle, you’ll be asked
something about a triangle.

When a diagram is supplied, you’ll have to make a leap
from information about the figure to information supplied in the
stem.

This is SAT geometry at its most simplistic, so let’s
dress it up to make it look a little more realistic. When a diagram
is supplied, information is given about the diagram in two places:
on the diagram itself and then in a crucial morsel placed within
the stem. An actual SAT geometry item would look like:

4.

If Ë, then what is the area of rectangle ACDE?

(A)

(B)

5

(C)

7

(D)

35

(E)

49

In this example, you are given information about the triangle
but asked about the rectangle. There’s information about the triangle
in the diagram, but you can bet it’s not enough to answer the item.
Another fact is given in the stem (˚),
but it’s not enough to answer the item alone. It is the information
about the triangle in the diagram combined with the
information in the stem that will provide you with what you need
to find the area of the rectangle.